This is totally true: I ended up going to one of those top tier universities just because the economics worked out much better than virtually every other opportunity I had. Depending on how you account for things, actually ended up making a profit without working either a full or a part time job.
The culture shock issue was huge, though: half the people in my freshman dorm read the New Yorker (or, more accurately, subscribed to it and prominently displayed it as an affectation), while I hadn't even heard of it. Learning how to ape upper class cultural cues was probably the most valuable thing I got out of college.